No Unearthed Arcana Today

[jaappleton]

Because Jeremy Crawford was at PAX Unplugged recently.

Those scheduled things they knew about months in advance really sneak up on ya' unexpectedly, it seems.

[Foxhound438]

I mean, I'm not going to say that such things don't ever sneak up, but they seem to sneak up on these guys every time... Maybe they should've taken some proficiency in perception...

[Daphne]

Those scheduled things they knew about months in advance really sneak up on ya' unexpectedly, it seems.

Unexpected? They warned 4 days ago (https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1070792497419444224) about it on Twitter.

[jaappleton]

Unexpected? They warned 4 days ago (https://twitter.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1070792497419444224) about it on Twitter.

And they knew about PAX months before then, and they're the ones that set the Unearthed Arcana release date of the 2nd Monday of every month, so....

My point stands.

Its not like they had no idea he was going to PAX. Its not like they didn't know when UA day is.

[Unoriginal]

Because Jeremy Crawford was at PAX Unplugged recently.

Those scheduled things they knew about months in advance really sneak up on ya' unexpectedly, it seems.



My point stands.

"God dammit WotC, how can we complain about your UAs if you don't publish them? You should work harder so we can tell you how much your work is ****."

[jaappleton]

"God dammit WotC, how can we complain about your UAs if you don't publish them? You should work harder so we can tell you how much your work is ****."

UA is a way to playtest content and a way to generate hype for future products and releases.

Its also fairly consistently delayed or simply not released.

[Unoriginal]

UA is a way to playtest content and a way to generate hype for future products and releases.

UA is a way for people on this forum to complain for 7 pages about what the designers are doing. Please, jaapleton, let's respect our respective intelligence and not try to pretend those "let's talk about UA" threads are anything but that.



Its also fairly consistently delayed or simply not released.

Yeah, I too am very pissed off at not being given free things other people work on.

[jaappleton]

UA is a way for people on this forum to complain for 7 pages about what the designers are doing. Please, jaapleton, let's respect our respective intelligence and not try to pretend those "let's talk about UA" threads are anything but that.



Yeah, I too am very pissed off at not being given free things other people work on.

Go ahead and call me entitled if you want to. But its frustrating when you wait all month for content you look forward to only to have the rug pulled out from under you fairly consistently. This isn't some 'once in awhile' occurrence, this happens a decent percentage of the time. I'm talking like 30-35% of the time, this happens.

That isn't some 'once in a blue moon' occurrence.

EDIT: And yes, a lot of the posts in UA topics are people complaining about the designs. But you know some of that is entirely justified. Lore Wizard, Alternative Initiative, etc. Other times the discussions are very fruitful and worthwhile, like a lot of the Xanathar's stuff, or the Order Cleric. It depends on what it is. If the design is ****, then call it ****. If its solid, say so. That's what discussions are for.

[Willie the Duck]

Regardless of whether these discussions tend to devolve into the toxic ****-piling of an unpleasable fanbase, or whether UA material is good/bad/otherwise, or whether we are owed anything at all of other peoples' hard work, I think it would be safe to say that the designers are having a hard time meeting this monthly content expectation. Therefore it might be good for them to declare it not to be an expected monthly occurrence, or to intersperse it with something they could get written up otherwise. Dragon magazine oscillated quite a bit in how much functional bits it had vs. articles on Good DMing, or ecology of the wolfwere or peeks into the game design process, etc. If they don't have a new car for us to test drive, I'd be more than happy with a peek under the hood every other month instead.

[jaappleton]

Regardless of whether these discussions tend to devolve into the toxic ****-piling of an unpleasable fanbase, or whether UA material is good/bad/otherwise, or whether we are owed anything at all of other peoples' hard work, I think it would be safe to say that the designers are having a hard time meeting this monthly content expectation. Therefore it might be good for them to declare it not to be an expected monthly occurrence, or to intersperse it with something they could get written up otherwise. Dragon magazine oscillated quite a bit in how much functional bits it had vs. articles on Good DMing, or ecology of the wolfwere or peeks into the game design process, etc. If they don't have a new car for us to test drive, I'd be more than happy with a peek under the hood every other month instead.

I'd be fine with that so long as they actually delivered the articles on schedule.

I know its a me problem, but I just hate having the rug pulled out from under me when I'm looking forward to something.

Like you said, test drive the car every two months? Ok, same time, same place, every two months.

But if its monthly and I go to the garage and there's no car... WTH?

[Unoriginal]

I think it would be safe to say that the designers are having a hard time meeting this monthly content expectation. Therefore it might be good for them to declare it not to be an expected monthly occurrence, or to intersperse it with something they could get written up otherwise.

I agree with this entirely.

[Foxhound438]

I don't see why they don't take this kind of situation as an opportunity to put out the stuff that's on Mearls' show in a printed format. That would at least give us something to look at, and optimally he'd get feedback from people other than his stream chat crowd in the subsequent survey so we can say how poorly we think swapping out spellcasting for a 4HP per level animal companion would work.

[Twigwit]

We’ve got complaining about the lack of stuff to complain about, then the complaining about the people who were complaining about the lack of stuff to complain about, and for good measure we have complaining about those guys too. Welcome to the internet.

For the record, I would have liked a UA this month too. Content that gets UAs almost always ends up better in the final release or is pruned. Play testing is good for this game, we should do more of it instead of less.

[the_brazenburn]

So they couldn't put out a UA because one of their important designers was absent?

I call BS. Last I checked, there's more than one person on the WOTC staff...

Why couldn't they have an intern put together a "revised weapons table" or just print some of Mearls' stuff?

[jaappleton]

So they couldn't put out a UA because one of their important designers was absent?

I call BS. Last I checked, there's more than one person on the WOTC staff...

Why couldn't they have an intern put together a "revised weapons table" or just print some of Mearls' stuff?

It makes me question WHEN they start working on UA. The weekend before the Monday? I mean, what's the rest of their schedule for the month?

[Foxhound438]

It makes me question WHEN they start working on UA. The weekend before the Monday? I mean, what's the rest of their schedule for the month?

I'm fairly certain that they wait until everyone's in the office monday morning, and then set the whole place on fire so they can run around frantically trying to put something that makes sense together some months.

the rest of the month they probably sit around counting their fat stacks of PHB sales cash before Hasbro comes in to take the lion's share.

[Beechgnome]

I hope the decision to just push it back a week instead of cancelling it outright is a sign from above that we're finally going to get a reworked artificer. (Crosses fingers with eyes closed... Please please please).

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while that Hasbro's strategy for D&D for 5e has been to reduce overhead and management to a skeleton crew and hiring temps as needed, turning the whole thing into a brutally, brutally efficient and low-cost machine in order to min-max their own cost-profit ratio. Meaning, I don't think they have the regular manpower to manage something like UA with even monthly regularity given their other duties, from playtesting and responding to players like us to the banal realities of corporate management.

All speculation of course, but they seem to do a lot of outsourcing and hiring guest writers, and this would explain a whole lot. While the obvious solution is 'then hire someone to do it', that flies in the face of the low overhead strategy I think they might be using.

[Rhedyn]

Truly this will be the end of 5e!

[Mortis_Elrod]

I'm tired of UA not coming on schedule. I use to be excited every month for it only to be disappointing with a later and later release. Think this is the first month i totally forgot about it and was randomly viewing the forum and saw the thread.

So at this point I'll be surprised if they put the UA out on time at all. Or if we ever see the artificer again. I'm just overall less satisfied with 5e right now. I'm sure that will change when i see the artificer or some new content.
Started playing pathfinder though, so that will at least hold my attention for a while now.

[strangebloke]

I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while that Hasbro's strategy for D&D for 5e has been to reduce overhead and management to a skeleton crew and hiring temps as needed, turning the whole thing into a brutally, brutally efficient and low-cost machine in order to min-max their own cost-profit ratio. Meaning, I don't think they have the regular manpower to manage something like UA with even monthly regularity given their other duties, from playtesting and responding to players like us to the banal realities of corporate management.

All speculation of course, but they seem to do a lot of outsourcing and hiring guest writers, and this would explain a whole lot. While the obvious solution is 'then hire someone to do it', that flies in the face of the low overhead strategy I think they might be using.

Well, they're also heavily using a 'less is more' strategy with respect to publishing. They probably could hire a thousand people and churn stuff out but they'd prefer to have small bundles of heavily playtested material.

Outside of Xanathar's, they've published 2-3 subclasses each year. With each UA with subclasses in it contained 2-3 subclasses, and each subclass getting 2-3 versions out before publication, that means we could expect... .6 to 4.5 UAs containing subclasses per year?

I don't know what ya'll expectation was.

In any case, the only reason anyone cares about it is because the UA tends to be pretty well-designed but a little overpowered, which is perfect for us powergamers.

I'm tired of UA not coming on schedule. I use to be excited every month for it only to be disappointing with a later and later release. Think this is the first month i totally forgot about it and was randomly viewing the forum and saw the thread.

So at this point I'll be surprised if they put the UA out on time at all. Or if we ever see the artificer again. I'm just overall less satisfied with 5e right now. I'm sure that will change when i see the artificer or some new content.
Started playing pathfinder though, so that will at least hold my attention for a while now.

It completely blows my mind that some people play so much DND that "lack of new content" is a primary reason for getting bored with the system. I have like ten characters I want to play, and I'd give each one a run for 2 years or more if I had the chance.

Or is the lack of new content annoying because it doesn't jive with your hobby of theorycrafting? I can get that but admittedly 5e is not designed around the character building minigame.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Well, they're also heavily using a 'less is more' strategy with respect to publishing. They probably could hire a thousand people and churn stuff out but they'd prefer to have small bundles of heavily playtested material.

Outside of Xanathar's, they've published 2-3 subclasses each year. With each UA with subclasses in it contained 2-3 subclasses, and each subclass getting 2-3 versions out before publication, that means we could expect... .6 to 4.5 UAs containing subclasses per year?

I don't know what ya'll expectation was.

In any case, the only reason anyone cares about it is because the UA tends to be pretty well-designed but a little overpowered, which is perfect for us powergamers.
Eh, I'm only mildly disappointed. Like I said, I think they're a smaller group that simply can't handle this kind of commitment, and I can understand the business reasons for running things this way.

I could be wrong of course and maybe there's 100 workers apparently sitting on their thumbs and neglecting their commitments while cashing in largely undeserved paychecks, but I'm really doubting it. Hasbro's been around long enough that I'd at least trust that they'd make simple business decisions like 'not hiring legions of useless people that can't get anything done while we continue to keep them on our bankroll'. That's not exactly extolling their virtues, merely pointing out that they'd go under real quick if that were true.

And while I want more material and regular UA's, I also can't disagree that this is the right business model. Excellent TTRPG's have sunk and died several times over in the past for not keeping their overhead low. TSR, famously.

[Mortis_Elrod]

It completely blows my mind that some people play so much DND that "lack of new content" is a primary reason for getting bored with the system. I have like ten characters I want to play, and I'd give each one a run for 2 years or more if I had the chance.

Or is the lack of new content annoying because it doesn't jive with your hobby of theorycrafting? I can get that but admittedly 5e is not designed around the character building minigame.

There's only so much play one can do, so even if i have a few characters lined up, I can't reasonably play them all, I can only make time for so many weekly/bi-weekly games. So 'character building minigame' is something to do that is fun but also makes the first issue bigger with more and more builds, which is only fine so long as i have new toys to fiddle with.

5e is still fun for me, and i still have a weekly game that i play my lizardfolk death cleric in, but UAs are increasingly more disappointing mostly because of the delayed nature we get them in. I wouldn't mind it at all if the devs went out and said "we can't do the scheduled times anymore, so UA will be there whenever we have the time". Recognize the need for change and address is with the fans. Do that and i have nothing else to say.

So yeah, im mostly trying to play pathfinder because its new to me but also near the end of its cycle until 2e comes, so it has a wealth of options to toy with and rules to grapple. And if/when 5e gets more stuff ill come back to it more gusto. For now its just.......not enough.

[jaappleton]

Jeremy Crawford has confirmed to me that the December UA is NOT the Artificer.

Also, in slightly related news, he doesn’t like puppies, and prefers older cats.

[Rhedyn]

It completely blows my mind that some people play so much DND that "lack of new content" is a primary reason for getting bored with the system. I have like ten characters I want to play, and I'd give each one a run for 2 years or more if I had the chance.

Or is the lack of new content annoying because it doesn't jive with your hobby of theorycrafting? I can get that but admittedly 5e is not designed around the character building minigame.

I know our group, that when someone else plays a class/sub combo, everyone is then less excited to play it themselves. Now sure we had a few repeats back when we played 5e, plenty of us felt like we were "running out" of material long before we quit the system for other reasons.

[Beechgnome]

Jeremy Crawford has confirmed to me that the December UA is NOT the Artificer.

Also, in slightly related news, he doesn’t like puppies, and prefers older cats.

Well boo-urns.

I guess my next hope is that the UA gives us some signal as to 2019 books being cooked up. I'm reminded of how befuddled I was when they put out the minotaur/centaur UA, but we saw that end up in Ravnica. The ships one last month could be part of spelljammer or something else.

More than complaining for the sake of complaining, I look forward to the UAs for the hints they provide about what comes next.

[jaappleton]

Well boo-urns.



I was saying boo-urns...

[Tetrasodium]

Jeremy Crawford has confirmed to me that the December UA is NOT the Artificer.

Also, in slightly related news, he doesn’t like puppies, and prefers older cats.

Puppies are usually better behaved, more friendly, & ready to play than "older cats"
/s

[Daithi]

I'm with jaappleton on this one. I look forward to UA every month and it is disappointing when they don't post one. To be completely honest, it ticks me off, not that I don't get over it or expect anyone else to give a shi... I'm just telling you how it makes me feel.

It's kind of like getting horrible service when I go to Ihop. It ticks me off because I don't feel like an appreciated customer, but I keep coming back because I really like the steak omelet and the hot chocolate. Plus, most of the time I go to Ihop the service is pretty good. Unlike the waitstaff at Ihop, WotC drops the ball on UA pretty frequently. In any case, making your customer base feel like they are an after thought is a bad thing.

By the way, I also watch the Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour thing, and months ago he hinted that the Artificer was about to be released to UA. If it was nearly done months ago then it isn't a stretch to believe they could have had something to release today. This is especially true when the last few releases have been reprints of the Eberron stuff that they had just released.

[Auramis]

It's kind of like getting horrible service when I go to Ihop. It ticks me off because I don't feel like an appreciated customer, but I keep coming back because I really like the steak omelet and the hot chocolate. Plus, most of the time I go to Ihop the service is pretty good. Unlike the waitstaff at Ihop, WotC drops the ball on UA pretty frequently. In any case, making your customer base feel like they are an after thought is a bad thing.

We aren't paying for the UA, though. They warned us it would be late this time, and they recently released a couple new books. Being one week behind due to the busy nature of this time of the year doesn't seem unreasonable. Just means we read the UA next week instead of this one.

[Willie the Duck]

Eh, I'm only mildly disappointed. Like I said, I think they're a smaller group that simply can't handle this kind of commitment, and I can understand the business reasons for running things this way. ... I could be wrong of course and maybe there's 100 workers apparently sitting on their thumbs and neglecting their commitments while cashing in largely undeserved paychecks, but I'm really doubting it. ... And while I want more material and regular UA's, I also can't disagree that this is the right business model. Excellent TTRPG's have sunk and died several times over in the past for not keeping their overhead low. TSR, famously.

I think it's a glorious mix of all of it. D&D is profitable right now because 1) they seem to have hit it out of the park with this edition, to everyone's surprise, and 2) they have kept the overhead bloat down, for the first time ever.

My general overall impression is that the fans have unrealistic expectations of what can be done. OTOH, I think WotC has been rather part of the problem in that regard. This promising (or soft promising, I don't remember what's actually been stated about the frequency of these things) of the UA is an expectation that WotC set up (or at least fostered), and then can't meet. They should feel bad about that. We, the fans, should recognize that maybe we should have realized that this sounded a little like overpromising in the first place.

[Tetrasodium]

The shift also puts the next UA as coming out about the same time schools (US & probably other counries) let out for christmas vacation. I'm hoping that it might be tied to a release like morgraves misc at around the same time.

[Vogie]

I don't see why they don't take this kind of situation as an opportunity to put out the stuff that's on Mearls' show in a printed format. That would at least give us something to look at, and optimally he'd get feedback from people other than his stream chat crowd in the subsequent survey so we can say how poorly we think swapping out spellcasting for a 4HP per level animal companion would work.

This is what I'd do. I recently started watching the Happy Fun Hour, and I think Mike would benefit from having more feedback than just those who are in the twitch chat during the show.

Do you like data? 'Cause that's how you get data.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT8hrVrPkQFESorFtYNcC5uXV6k2LGcg QWs8TBupd_w7mmTLXHR

[jaappleton]

Seriously, why aren’t Mike’s HFH designs available as text documents? I can’t dedicate an hour to a video. I can read a 10 minute article.

[Daphne]

Seriously, why aren’t Mike’s HFH designs available as text documents? I can’t dedicate an hour to a video. I can read a 10 minute article.

Agreed. In the meantime, ThinkDM has a compilation (https://thinkdm.wordpress.com/hfh/) of the designs in his website.

[jaappleton]

Agreed. In the meantime, ThinkDM has a compilation (https://thinkdm.wordpress.com/hfh/) of the designs in his website.

Praise be to ThinkDM, I shall be their Paladin of Devotion!